“Oh, that pisses you off?” NASCAR insider teases fans as he declines to “change his mind” about Bristol Night Race 

Kenny Wallace has presented contradictory thoughts about NASCAR's Bristol race. According to the NASCAR insider, many fans didn't like the uneventful competition, however, he claimed it to be a "great race" despite it not meeting the community's expectations.

The Bass Pro Shops Night Race marked the elimination night for the Round of 16, where four drivers failed to advance to the Round of 12. These include Joe Gibbs Racing teammates Martin Truex Jr. and Ty Gibbs, Harrison Burton, and Brad Keselowski.

Meanwhile, Hendrick Motorsports' Kyle Larson etched a historic win on the 'World's Fastest Half-Mile' track. After starting second, triumphing both stages and leading 462 laps, the #5 Chevy driver registered his fifth win by a record-breaking margin of 7.088 seconds, the largest in the NextGen era.

The 500-lap race witnessed five cautions, the last being Corey LaJoie's wreck on Lap 329. After that, no chaotic moment surfaced which could sent the elimination race into overtime.

Kenny Wallace addressed the "boring" aspect of the race and hilariously refused to give his nod to what the "old and angry" fans expected out of the Round of 16 finale. He said:

"As a racecar driver, I'm watching the art of these guys racing. Was the race boring? That's an eye-beholder. I call you all the old fans, the fans that are upset, but you call yourselves legacy fans now. Is that a clean version of fans that are old and angry? (3:42).

"'We're legacy fans, we don't like NASCAR no more because we want wrecking, we want pitstops every four laps'. I do not agree with you and just to irritate you a little bit, not going to change my mind. Oh! That pisses you off? Not going to change my mind. I'm having fun with you, it was a great race, it was a great night, it wasn't the best race of all time but it was a great race, it was a good time," he added.

Kyle Larson will enter Round of 12 at Kansas Speedway as the top-ranked NASCAR Cup Series driver with a 39-point buffer over the cutline.

Martin Truex Jr. lost his final shot at becoming a two-time NASCAR Cup Series champion by 0.9 mph

Earlier this year in June, Truex Jr. announced that the 2024 Cup season would be his final full-time schedule with Joe Gibbs Racing and he will retire after the current season. Since entering JGR's stable in 2019, the #19 Toyota driver has bagged the runner-up position twice in the standings- in 2019 and 2021.

However, the veteran driver has failed to replicate his 2017 success when he clinched eight wins, 19 top-5s, and 26 top-10s to etch his first NASCAR Cup Series championship.

As he is in his final year of full-time cup racing, Martin Truex Jr. won't get another shot at the NASCAR championship unless he changes his mind and returns to a full-time schedule. Despite having no wins, he made the playoffs but couldn't perform optimally in the first two races. As a result, he entered the elimination race with a 14-point deficit.

Truex Jr. ran with the frontrunners and posted fourth and second-place finishes in both stages. However, he crossed the speed limit on pit road by 0.9 mph which attracted a penalty and pushed him down for a 24th-place restart. That was the final blow to his second Cup title as he couldn't regain momentum and wrapped his run in P24.

"It was 0.9 mph. Really frustrated, upset, hate it for my guys. They worked so hard and we got a shot at it tonight, it wasn't gonna be easy and there's no guarantee as we had to run second or third to make it through. It was gonna be tough, I don't know if we were quite good enough, but it would be nice to find out at least. Just hated that I screwed it up for everybody," Truex Jr. said via Dirty Mo Media on X.

The Round of 12 will be a 400-mile event, slated to kick off on Sunday, September 29, at 3:00 PM ET.